Modeling the Impact of Soil Management on Soil Functions - a Systemic Approach.

Evaluating the impact of soil management on various essential soil functions is an actual challenge for sustainable land use. Beyond the production of biomass, these functions are nutrient cycling, carbon storage, filter and storage for water and habitat for biological activity. Modeling the impact of agricultural soil management requires a comprehensive understanding of soil processes and their interactions. In this contribution, we present a systemic modeling approach. The approach is focused on a set of functional soil properties that are deemed to contain substantial and integral information on the multitude of physical, chemical and biological processes. Indicators for soil functions are derived based on the same set of properties. Their dynamics in response to external forcing are modeled by a representation of their non-linear interactions. In this way, the stability and resilience of soil systems can also be assessed. The model approach relies on the formulation of internal interactions, which represent our current knowledge and can be further developed with growing insight. We present an example for the recovery of soil structure and the related soil functions after compaction.